How did Captain Train's business offer come about?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - From the very first days CaptainTrain was up and running, we were contacted by professionals. The first call we received was from a company director, who was delighted that our platform enabled his secretary to manage all the weekly bookings in an hour, whereas she used to spend half a day on it. We quickly realised that our tool was perfectly suited to businesses. So we always had in mind to develop a business offer, even though we had already gradually integrated into the general public tool some functions useful to corporate customers. We then responded to a specific call for tenders for the train, launched by the Ministry of Ecology, in September 2014. We wanted to test our ideas against their needs, and we won the tender. We were therefore able to put in place a tool that was fully adapted to their expectations, and even went further. Since the launch of this product on 1 January 2015, more than 7,000 users from the Ministry have registered.
What proportion of your users are business travellers, and what increase are you aiming to achieve with this new product?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - We estimate it at 40%. We are growing in domestic, international and business traffic. It is difficult for us to predict which of these segments will grow fastest over the coming months.
What is the added value of Captain Train compared with the other tools available?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - We have the advantage of being neutral, since we are not tied to any one operator, so we can sell the full range of offers. We offer combinations of operators, and we have created an itinerary engine that enables us to calculate all the solutions a priori. We don't consider that a user should only have access to one part of the fares simply because they are a professional. These travellers also have the right to access IDTGV offers, and even OuiGo, especially if the SNCF train is full... We provide the entire offer, and it is then up to the user to make their own intelligent decisions.
How does your approach differ from currently available solutions?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - We are moving away from a mechanism that, in our view, is not healthy: the complete delegation of fare selection to the travel agency. Of course, billing on a fee-for-service basis is not supposed to encourage the agency to sell a €200 ticket instead of a similar, much cheaper option. But the agency is also interested in its commission... Our approach is to delegate as much as possible the choice of fare to the employee himself. We assume that the traveller will take care of managing the costs, even if it's the company that pays. The challenge is to make booking a train ticket as quick and easy as possible. That was our pitch to win over the general public. It's also true for the business segment.
How does the business travel section launched today by Captain Train work?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - It simply involves creating and administering a company account, with each user then able to use their own account, including from their smartphone. The company can then define the rights of each user, with validation by the travel manager. Finally, many companies grant all rights to their employees to give them maximum autonomy. This is crucial, because it saves everyone a considerable amount of time, without blowing up the bill. Users pay attention to price. They're normal people: between a ticket costing 200 euros and another costing twice as much, the user opts for the most relevant offer.
What is your target audience?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - We wanted to do something broader for the corporate market, with the idea of equipping everyone. We're not just targeting large groups, but also SMEs, who ultimately have the same accounting and administration problems. Our invoicing has been designed to be tailored to the needs of each individual, and works on a per-active-traveller basis. In this way, we move away from billing on a per-trip basis, which is representative of the work involved but which ultimately costs something for each cancellation or modification. Our subscription system works on a monthly or yearly basis, and allows companies to book and change as many tickets as they like, at no extra cost. So they know exactly what they are going to pay for each employee, i.e. 9 euros a month, or 59 euros a year.
On what scale does this tool work?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - The solution is European. It covers the whole of France, Germany and Italy, and part of 19 European countries. We are currently working on connecting all the European markets. Does your solution include a reporting component? Jean-Daniel Guyot - We designed the tool in a simple way: we are not an expense report tool like Concur, but a train ticket reservation tool. Nevertheless, we are aware of the reporting needs of companies. The web interface therefore includes a page bringing together all the invoices month by month, and if the company has set up a more automated system, we provide files to be processed in Excel. For customers who want to go further, there's our partnership with Concur, which automatically synchronises the data. It's quite magical!
What about payment methods?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - In addition to Visa, Mastercard and Amex, we accept payments via Paypal. Today we are also launching a new feature with American Express, integrating their hosted card, which allows the company to add its hosted card to its account so that travellers can use it, including on mobile.
With these various improvements, do you feel that the business travel issue has come full circle?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - There's always room for improvement, but we've met the basic expectations of the market. Everything we've developed seems simple, but no one else has done it. It's very complex to connect to all the operators, to set up an itinerary engine, to bring together all these means of payment for the different operators.
What is your relationship with the various operators, who are both partners and competitors?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - Operators have access to different sales channels, and Voyages SNCF is just one of them. But operators have every interest in seeing other channels develop, other ways of selling the train. We have succeeded in convincing operators that we are there to develop a premium channel that adds value to their offers and ultimately increases the size of the market. Our message is well understood.
Has it always been so?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - We can't say that this has been the case since day one with SNCF, of course. But over the last three or four years, the situation has been reversed. Now it's the operators who are coming to us to be integrated into the platform. It's a slow, heavy industry, but one that has realised over the last ten years that it needed to move away from an unprofitable public service model towards a profitable public or private service. So we need to ensure that the trains are full, and increase the number of sales channels. We all have the same goal. We are not here to cannibalise their offer. We are capable of selling very well internationally, and in fact we are translated into French, English, German, Spanish and Italian, with customer support in all these languages. We are the only company to offer sales by combination, for example a Thello and an IDTGV.
Where do things stand in terms of the arrival of competition on the railways?
Jean-Daniel Guyot - From our point of view, it already exists, insofar as we are present in Italy where the competition is very strong and works really well, essentially on high speed. We have seen an increase in punctuality, service and, above all, train comfort, in a very Italian style, advocating a form of 'low-cost luxury'. Fares, on the other hand, have fallen. This is entirely due to competition. The quality of the product has truly reached a level rarely equalled internationally. The regional network has also seen its punctuality rate soar. These Italian competitors will soon be arriving on the French market, since Trenitalia will be launching on the Paris-Brussels route in 2017, which means tomorrow! Deutsch Bahn is also interested in this route. But internationalisation is very complex to manage for a rail company, in terms of legal, regulatory, safety, maintenance and logistical issues. In the end, Thello, like Thalys, had to wipe the slate clean.
